WOLVERINE

In Uncanny X-Men Annual #11 (1987) — "Lost in the Funhouse," by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis — the alien mutant Horde forces the X-Men into the Citadel of Light and Shadow to steal the Crystal of Ultimate Vision. At the climax, Horde impales Logan on a javelin, then tears out his heart to keep as a trophy. He is, by any measure, dead. But as his heart is ripped free, a single drop of Wolverine's blood lands on the Crystal — and the Crystal supercharges his healing factor, rebuilding his entire body, adamantium skeleton and all, from that one drop.

Logan's own explanation is pure Logan: his healing factor is in every cell of his body — and so, apparently, is his will to live. The reborn Wolverine comes back with the Crystal's power in him: absolute omniscience, one with the universe, effectively a god. He reclaims the Crystal shard set in Horde's brow, and Horde — already centuries old — rapidly ages and dies. Then Logan does the most Wolverine thing possible with godhood: he refuses it. Deciding no one should hold that power, he destroys the Crystal, and the X-Men wake back at the mansion with the whole ordeal already fading like a dream.

Here's the part the power-scaling arguments always leave out: Logan could not do this on an ordinary day. The resurrection only works because the Crystal of Ultimate Vision amplifies his healing factor to a cosmic level — on his own, a torn-out heart is the end. The story is also a test in disguise: the Citadel exists to judge whether a species is fit to evolve, and passing means reaching ultimate power and giving it up. Wolverine, of all people, passed — not by surviving the unsurvivable, but by walking away from omnipotence.